


You're The One Who Told Me to Never Look Back

by TamscendingGender



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, I'm Soft And Gay, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Not Graphic Though!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TamscendingGender/pseuds/TamscendingGender
Summary: Geralt of Rivia is riding through a forest. It's late, and it's raining, and all he wants to do is find a dry place to hunker down for the night. However, the universe has other plans for him, and he comes across a werewolf attacking someone. Someone he knows.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 209





	You're The One Who Told Me to Never Look Back

**Author's Note:**

> This is primarily based off of the Netflix series, although I did steal some post-episode 8 canon content from the books. Also, I did write this in like 3 hours after listening to 'Shower Day' by The Amazing Devil because sometimes you just go feral and abandon working on your longfic for silly little fluff things. Thank you for reading!!

It was raining. The mud sucked at Roach’s hooves, and the river they had crossed a few miles back had been overflowing, soaking Geralt of Rivia up to his hips. He had put his hood up, but the rain was still dripping into his face. Based on the way the light had changed since he had set out into this mess that morning, it was drawing close to evening, and he was nowhere near a town and the blessed respite of a dry place to sleep.

“Fuck.” Geralt muttered to himself, wiping the rain from his eyes and smearing mud across his cheek. He was not sure if he would find anywhere dry that night. It was all wood from here until the main road, and while Geralt wasn’t exactly sure how far away from the road he was, it was certainly not close enough for him to get there before dark. He almost envied Ciri her nice warm convent bed in an enclosed dormitory, but he knew she would prefer to be out here in the mud. He hadn’t received a letter from her in several weeks, and he missed her. It had been almost a year now since Triss had come to Kaer Morhen and taken Ciri off to school. Geralt had anticipated feeling relieved that his charge was safe, and that he didn’t have to worry about her anymore, but instead he had felt an overwhelming sense of loss. Ciri had become...well, if he was honest with himself, Ciri was like his daughter. He wondered if this was how biological parents felt when they sent their children away to school. 

Roach picked her way around a patchwork of puddles, and Geralt sighed, rubbing her neck and then wiping the mud off on his soaked thigh. 

“We might have to sleep out in this shit, Roach.” he said. Roach huffed quietly. “I know, I know. I’ll buy you extra hot mash when we reach town.” They rode under a low-hanging tree and Geralt received a faceful of wet leaves. “Oh, shut up.” he muttered when Roach whickered softly. The rain began to pelt more rapidly, and Geralt hunched his shoulders against the downpour. He would kill for a nice bath at that moment. 

His ears twitched as he caught the sound of a shout. It was muffled by the pounding rain, but he had heard it clearly. Roach had, too. Her ears flicked, and she perked her head up, looking around the darkening woods. 

“What’s that, Roach?” Geralt asked. “Did you hear that?” Roach made a noise at him. “I don’t know if I’m…” He was cut off by the clear sound of a roar. “Damn it. Fuck.” By the sound of it, a feral werewolf had cornered some poor traveler in the woods and was about to make a nice meal for itself. Well, not if Geralt could get there in time. He nudged Roach towards the sound. It was not far, and he soon caught sight of the great beast lunging towards a blurry figure, who dove behind a tree. The werewolf rammed into the tree and snarled in frustration. Geralt leapt into the mud with a splash and ran through the trees, his greatsword raised. 

“Hey, fucker!” he shouted, trying to draw the creature’s attention away from its intended victim. With a roar, the werewolf whirled around and lunged towards Geralt. He swung his sword and caught it on the side of the neck. It screeched and slashed its claw towards him. Geralt managed to dodge and immediately riposted towards its stomach. He slipped and went sprawling, his mouth filling with mud and grass. The werewolf howled in triumph, but it’s howl was cut off and turned into a surprised whimper.

“Yeah, take that, you bastard!” a strangely familiar voice yelled from several feet away. The werewolf snarled and turned away from Geralt, giving him time to grab his sword. The original victim of the werewolf had hurled a dagger from their position behind a tree, and it had stuck in the werewolf’s haunches. Geralt ran, being careful of the mud, and brought his sword down on the huge wolf’s head just as it was about to slash at his savior. His sword aimed true, and the werewolf’s head fell to the forest floor in a spurt of blood. A decent amount of it got on Geralt’s clothes, and he sighed. The life of a witcher was one of too few baths and too much dirt. He walked to the end of the creature’s body and pulled the dagger out. It was familiar. The design was simple, but there was a carving of a wolf on the end of the hilt. It was a witcher’s silver dagger, but the person he had saved was not a witcher. That was certain. So...oh. 

“Fuck.” muttered Geralt. There was a squelching, and he looked up to see Jaskier standing on the other side of the werewolf’s body, staring at him with an odd expression in his bright blue eyes. 

He had not changed much since Geralt had last seen him, nearly two years ago. His hair was past his chin now, and plastered close to his face with rain and mud. It was hard to tell in the rain, but Geralt thought that he looked more tired than he had on the mountain. He was twisting his lips in a way that indicated he was trying to think of something to say. 

“Geralt.” Jaskier said finally. “You look...wet.” 

“Hmm.” Geralt tried to think of something to say. It had been two years, but they had left on a terrible note. He had tried to think of a way to rectify it, had spent so many nights staring up at the ceiling and wondering what he was supposed to say to Jaskier if he ever saw him again. 

“Hmm? Is that all you have to say?” Jaskier sounded like he was walking a thin line between civility and screaming at Geralt, and Geralt thought he had a right to feel like that. He started down at the corpse in between them.

“We should go somewhere else. Somewhere dry.” he said, studying the soggy fur of the werewolf.

“There’s a hollow under a tree back there.” Jaskier said, his voice still tense. “It’s where I left my stuff.” Geralt looked up at his friend and felt his heart breaking. He had missed Jaskier. There had not been a day that had gone by where he hadn’t seen something that reminded him of the bard, or heard ‘Toss a Coin’ floating out of an inn, or had sat in a dark room trying to go to sleep and instead wondering why he had been such an asshole, why he had taken all of his anger out on Jaskier instead of...instead of what? “Are you coming, or are you going to stand in the rain like that all night?”

“I need to get Roach.” Geralt said finally. He turned on his heel and walked back into the trees to fetch his horse. When he returned to the place where the werewolf’s body lay, Jaskier had disappeared, but he could smell the beginnings of a campfire. 

Jaskier had found a sizable hollow in the hill, formed by thick tree roots and going back a fair distance. It was dry, and with the fire starting up it was warm. Geralt unsaddled Roach and tied her up to one of the roots, feeling guilty that he and Jaskier were staying dry while his horse got soaked. He shoved his gear into a small pile far away from Jaskier’s lute and damp rucksack, then sat in the corner, watching Jaskier coax the fire into being with determined fixation. Geralt watched the bard at work, taking in the curves of his face, the way his dark hair flopped into his eyes, the smears of mud on his cheeks. 

“Jaskier, you’re hurt.” he said suddenly, noticing a long rent in the arm of Jaskier’s doublet. Now that he focused on things that were not Jaskier’s physical presence, he noticed the faint tang of blood in the air. “Here, let me…”

“It’s fine.” Jaskier’s eyes flickered up from his work. “I can take care of it in the morning.” He reached over and did his best to close the tear. Geralt dropped his hands and pulled his wet cloak close around him. 

“Jaskier…” he began, then stopped. He didn’t know what he was going to say.

“I’ve been trying to get away from you for two years.” Jaskier said to the fire. “After that  _ fucking _ dragon hunt, I’ve been trying to find a new life, away from being the witcher’s bard. But I can’t. If people don’t ask me to sing that  _ song _ , they’ll ask me to sing something else, and of course I was stupid enough to spend twenty years of my life only writing songs about you. And now I’m in some random woods in the middle of nowhere and of  _ course  _ there was a werewolf and of  _ course _ here comes Geralt of Rivia, prancing out of the rain with his big sword to save the day, and now I don’t know if I want to slap you or scream at you or...something else.” He threw his hands in the air. “But I guess the universe has something else planned for me.”

“People linked by destiny will always find each other.” The words fell out of Geralt’s mouth before he had a chance to think about them. It was what he had said to Ciri when he had found her in the woods, and somehow it felt right. Jaskier stared at him.

“Destiny? Since when have you cared about destiny? If I remember correctly, you spent fourteen years running from destiny.” he said. 

“Destiny caught up with me.” Geralt said quietly. 

“And then you left it behind somewhere, didn’t you?” Jaskier said. “I don’t see a Child Surprise trailing after you, unless Roach has been the Lion Cub of Cintra this whole time.”

“I...she went to school.”

“Classic Geralt.” Jaskier’s tone was deeply bitter. “Leaving people behind once they get too close.” Geralt stared at the fire. 

“I’m sorry, Jaskier.” he said finally, not looking up. “If I could go back to that mountain, I would have taken everything I said back. To you, to Yen...all of it. I’m sorry. I don’t have any excuses. I don’t expect you to forgive me. You can scream at me all you want. Gods know I deserve it. I just…” He trailed off. “I can leave in the morning. I can leave you to get away from me.” he said finally, pulling his cloak tighter around him. “You deserve that. You deserve to be...to be free.” They were silent. The rain splattered against the leaves outside, and Roach swished her tail. 

“I don’t want you to leave.” The words fell out of Jaskier suddenly, as if he had been trying to hold them back for years. “I don’t want to lose you again.” Geralt looked up from the fire and into Jaskier’s eyes. “I was so close to running down the mountain after you.” Jaskier continued, his voice trembling. “I thought I would never see you again, and for a moment I was certain it would be true. And I didn’t care, for a moment. I told myself I didn’t care. Good riddance, if that’s really what you thought of me. If Geralt of Rivia thinks I’m just a nuisance who fucks everything up, then fuck him.” He sat staring at the fire for another moment. “And then I cried myself to sleep that night. And I couldn’t bring myself to hate you. If you hadn’t kept cropping up in every performance, if I hadn’t heard your name whispered in every village I rode through, maybe I could have forgotten the good things, maybe I could have only remembered that you left me alone on a mountain with only angry words. It’s easier to hate the person who left you behind. But I didn’t even get that.” He wiped at his eyes and left another muddy smear on his cheek. “I had all these dramatic plans for what I was going to say to you when I finally saw you again. I was going to scream and cry and tell you how I never wanted to see your face again, and I think I wanted to slap you somewhere in there. Of course I had to find you again because I was getting attacked by a fucking werewolf.” He brushed more tears away with the muddy sleeve of his doublet. “Fuck, I’m covered in mud, aren’t I?”

“I think we both are.” Geralt said absently, unable to take his eyes off of Jaskier. He was trying to process what Jaskier had just told him. There was something between the lines of the monologue, something that Geralt knew deep in his soul, but he still couldn’t make himself understand it. Why would Jaskier… Something clicked. “Now that you don’t want to scream at me, can I take care of your arm?”

“I suppose.” Jaskier said. Geralt tugged his medicine pouch and waterskin out of the saddlebags and went to sit beside the bard. It was a clean scratch, miraculously, and it hadn’t gone very deep. They were both silent as Jaskier took his doublet and shirt off. He was wearing a sleeveless undershirt, the only article of clothing that had escaped the ravages of running through the woods. Geralt washed the scratch out and meticulously applied an antibiotic poultice to it, then wrapped it snuggly. Jaskier was watching him when he raised his eyes from his work. “Just like old times.” the bard said quietly.

“Was this the third thing?” Geralt asked, cautiously teasing. “Other than screaming or slapping? You wanted to get injured just so I would take care of you?” Jaskier smiled, then leaned across the small space between them and kissed him softly. It was a gentle kiss, and did not last very long. Jaskier pulled away from Geralt slowly, tentatively. There was a question in his eyes, and Geralt answered it.

They were both wet, and both of their hair was matted into a horrible tangle of mud and rainwater, but they did not care. Geralt’s hands found their way to Jaskier’s waist, and Jaskier ran his fingers through Geralt’s hair and over his face and down his back. If they had still been out in the rain and the mud, Geralt would not have noticed. Jaskier’s lips were tender against his own, and the heat of their bodies would have been enough to keep away the dreary weather. It was not the kiss he had imagined it would be all those times he had wondered what kissing Jaskier would feel like–there had been significantly less mud and tree root involved in those fantasies–but it was better than anything he had ever imagined. When Jaskier’s fingers brushed tentatively over the lacings of his cloak, he gave up every idea of what a romantic first would be and undid them himself. 

\------

Jaskier woke up slowly. Sunlight streamed through the leaves of the trees outside and brushed tentatively over the hollow. He breathed in the scent of damp earth and wet horse and muddy witcher. Even if Geralt’s arm hadn’t been draped over his chest, even if their legs hadn’t been tangled around each other, Jaskier would have been unwilling to leave their shelter. It had been a long time since he had felt this...safe. He snuggled closer to Geralt and stared out at the forest. Roach was tearing up the grass outside with a content expression on her face. Clearly, she had not minded the rain.

“Mmph…” Geralt shifted slightly and nestled his face in Jaskier’s hair. “....time s’ it…”

“Early.” Jaskier said, weaving his fingers through Geralt’s and pulling the witcher’s arms closer around him. “We don’t have anywhere to be, though.”

“Hmm.” Geralt mumbled contentedly. They lay in silence, listening to the morning sounds. Roach rolled in the damp grass, snorting in pleasure. Finally, Geralt sat up, dislodging the warm cover of the bedroll. “We should try and make it to a town before dark.” he said. “I need a bath.”

“I think we both do.” Jaskier said, rolling over and staring up at Geralt muscular back. “I can’t believe you enjoyed kissing my hair.” Geralt snorted and began pulling his underwear on. Once they were clothed, they pulled their things out of the hollow. Wordlessly, Geralt took Jaskier’s things and added them to the saddlebags. “Can we both fit on Roach?” Jaskier wondered walking over and stroking the horse’s nose.

“We have before.” Geralt said. “I don’t have any contracts right now...what do you say we go to the coast? Take a break from all this for a while.” He waved at the forest.

“I’d like that.” Jaskier said. “I’d like that very much.” Geralt smiled, and Jaskier reached up to kiss him. They climbed up onto Roach and began to ride through the dripping forest. The air was fresh, and the sun made the droplets on the leaves of the trees glitter. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day, Jaskier thought, resting his head against Geralt’s shoulder.

“Geralt?”

“Hmm?”

“I missed you. I missed this.” Geralt curled one of his hands around Jaskier’s.

“I missed you too,” he said.

“Course you did. I’m your own personal entertainment at all times.” Geralt snorted and took his eyes off of the path in front of them for a moment to press a kiss to Jaskier’s temple.

“You’re a little more than that, Jask.” he murmured. Their kissing was interrupted by a bundle of leaves smacking into both of their faces. “Fuck.” Geralt said, and Jaskier laughed. They continued through the trees to the road, and from there to the next chapter of their lives, the one that had been waiting for so long to be written.


End file.
